Glorious Ultra Clear Video Shows One Entire Year of the Sun

This is what the sun looks like over the course of a year. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the Sun and all of its fiery grace from January 1, 2015 to January 28, 2016. That beautiful burning orb looks unbelievable in this amount of detail.

SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) captures a shot of the sun every 12 seconds in 10 different wavelengths. The images shown here are based on a wavelength of 171 angstroms, which is in the extreme ultraviolet range and shows solar material at around 600,000 kelvins [599,726.85 degrees Celsius]. In this wavelength it is easy to see the sun’s 25-day rotation.

During the course of the video, the sun subtly increases and decreases in apparent size. This is because the distance between the SDO spacecraft and the sun varies over time. The image is, however, remarkably consistent and stable despite the fact that SDO orbits Earth at 6,876 mph, and Earth orbits the sun at 67,062 mph.